Bored at a Halloween party? Time for some secret Pumpkin Tetris

It's called Pumpktris—a gaming cabinet in a pumpkin, made with an Arduino.

Envision this: you're at a Halloween party, a little drunk, a little bored. You don't recognize anyone's costumes around you except the third, fourth, and fifth Psy you've seen that night, all doing the Gangnam style dance together. Your eyes pass over a seemingly innocuous pumpkin decoration. But wait—is that a Tetris matrix carved into its face? Is the stem a joystick? Are you in discreet gaming heaven?

Nathan Pryor of Hahabird initially aspired to grow several pumpkins into the shape of Tetris blocks (Tetrominos). But when that didn't pan out, he simply used an Arduino to turn a carved pumpkin into a compact gaming cabinet. Behold: a Pumpktris.

Initially Pryor planned to use a LoLShield LED matrix as the pumpkin's display, but each LED needed two wires to run to the Arduino board powering the game. The bundle would have been enormous—and a mess. So to make the display, Pryor built and wired his own (appropriately orange) 8×16 LED matrix and carved out 128 holes for each light on the face of an appropriately-shaped pumpkin. He also programmed the Arduino board true to the game's rules, with pieces that fall with increasing speed as the level goes up, as well as a scorekeeping element.

Pryor told Ars the entire project cost about $100 altogether (including Arduino, LEDs, LED controllers, joystick assembly, and four pumpkins—three of which he had to reject due to suboptimal shape). In all it took twelve hours to build. That means there's still time before your Halloween celebration tomorrow to make a Pumpktris. Use it to impress your friends, or ignore them—the Pumpktris does not judge.

The Pumpktris is the perfect Halloween party companion, and it would never stiff you on I-shaped Tetrominos.

I first saw this on HackADay, and was thoroughly impressed. Not by the electronics - I'm at about the author's level of Arduino capability.

It was the execution. I would never have thought of using the stem as the joystick handle, or if I did, I wouldn't have actually have done it. A very nice project. If I had 128 LEDs and some matrix controllers, I'd go nuts tonight.

Cool idea, but I question the choice of platform. Arduino, though still useful, is aging. A Raspberry Pi, though it may be faddish, would have been a bit hipper. But for this, the clear choice was Pumpkin Pi. Opportunity missed.

Cool idea, but I question the choice of platform. Arduino, though still useful, is aging. A Raspberry Pi, though it may be faddish, would have been a bit hipper. But for this, the clear choice was Pumpkin Pi. Opportunity missed.

LOL - I thought pretty much the same thing. Rasberry Pi on an orange circuit board would do the trick.